Coach Jim Schwartz preached all week about team pride and the importance of hosting the annual Thanksgiving Day game in front of a national television audience. Quarterback Matthew Stafford and receiver Calvin Johnson came bounding off the injured list and into the starting lineup, which gave the Lions a huge emotional boost. Then the Ford Field crowd got whipped into frenzy when the Packers fumbled the opening kickoff and handed the hosts a 7-0 lead.

When the Packers proceeded to miss an easy field goal, they looked like they would be in for a long day.

“We had to dig deep,” quarterback Aaron Rodgers said.

“There’s a lot of resolve in this team.”

After the Packers stumbled and bumbled around for the better part of the first quarter, Rodgers took things into his hands. He stunned the Lions’ defenders, silenced the towel-waving fans and turned the momentum the Packers’ way with one long bomb.

On third-and-11 from his 25, Rodgers unleashed a 68-yard completion to Donald Driver on the final play of the first quarter. He might as well have dropped an atomic bomb on the Lions.

“I kept running, the next thing I know, I see Aaron cock that arm back, I knew it was coming to me,” Driver said.

The Packers scored a touchdown on the next play and never trailed again.

Just as Rodgers was bringing the offense to life, Charles Woodson turned the defense into a voracious, turnover-producing, sack-happy monster.

The Packers’ one-two punch was lethal, and the Lions never stood a chance after that.

“The composure of this team, the maturity of this team, is starting to get up there,” linebacker Nick Barnett said. “We just have to keep working at it. We’re a young team but I think we’ve been showing a lot of maturity as these weeks go by.”

What pleases Packers coach Mike McCarthy most is his team has been responding better to hard times.

“There was definitely adversity in the game today,” McCarthy said. “That’s something that if you look at us in the past through this season, we could have handled it better.”

He could have been referring to the Packers’ loss at Tampa Bay earlier this month, when his team went into a fourth-quarter freefall and didn’t recover.

Since that collapse, the Packers have won three straight and have vaulted themselves into prime playoff position.

A victory over the lowly Lions is nothing to gloat about, and the Packers’ competition will get considerably tougher over the final month, beginning with a home date against the Baltimore Ravens a week from Monday.

But for now, the Packers can’t help but like where they sit, considering where they’ve been. Getting an 11-day break is like having a second bye week, and that should help them prepare for the home stretch.

“November and December games are very important,” Rodgers said. “That’s when you figure out who’s getting hot and who can make a run and who is really not a contender. We know what we have in front of us. It’s a tough stretch.”